ordinary situation. He had been paid to kill three doctors—not medical doctors,
as it turned out now, but scientists—all of them upstanding citizens, plus any
members of their families who happened to get in the way. Extraordinary.
Tomorrow’s papers weren’t going to have enough room for all the news. Something
very big was going on, something SO important that it might provide him with a
once-in-a-lifetime edge, with a shot at money so big he would need help to count
it. The money might come from selling the forbidden knowledge he had pried out
of Hudston. . . if he could figure out who would like to buy it. But knowledge
was not only saleable; it was also dangerous. Ask Adam. Ask Eve. If his current
employers, the Sexy-voiced lady and the other people in L.A., learned that he
had broken the most basic rule of his trade, if they knew that he had
interrogated one of his victims before wasting him, they would put out a
contract on Vince. The hunter would become the hunted.
Of course, he didn’t worry a lot about dying. He had too much life stored up in
him. Other people’s lives. More lives than ten cats. He was going to live
forever. He was pretty sure of that. But . . . well, he didn’t know for certain
how many lives he had to absorb in order to insure immortality. Sometimes he
felt that he’d already achieved a state of invincibility, eternal life. But at
other times, he felt that he was still vulnerable and that he would have to take
more life energy into himself before he would reach the desired state of
godhood. Until he knew, beyond doubt, that he had arrived at Olympus, it was
best to exercise a little caution.
Banodyne.
The Francis Project.
if what Hudston said was true, the risk Vince was taking would be well-rewarded
when he found the right buyer for the information. He was going to be a rich
man.
8
Wes Dalberg had lived alone in a stone cabin in upper Holy Jim Canyon on the
eastern edge of Orange County for ten years. His only light came from Coleman
lanterns, and the only running water in the place was from a hand pump in the
kitchen sink. His toilet was in an outhouse with a quarter-moon carved on the
door (as a joke), about a hundred feet from the back of the cabin.
Wes was forty-two, but he looked older. His face was wind-scoured and
sun-leathered. He wore a neatly trimmed beard with a lot of white whiskers.
Although he appeared aged beyond his true years, his physical condition was that
of a twenty-five-year-old. He believed his good health resulted from living
close to nature.
Tuesday night, May 18, by the silvery light of a hissing Coleman lantern, he sat
at the kitchen table until one in the morning, sipping homemade plum wine and
reading a McGee novel by John D. MacDonald. Wes was, as he put it, “an
antisocial curmudgeon born in the wrong century,” who had little, use for modern
society. But he liked to read about McGee because McGee swam in that messy,
nasty world out there and never let the murderous currents sweep him away.
When he finished the book at one o’clock, Wes went outside to get more wood for
the fireplace. Wind-swayed branches of sycamores cast vague moonshadows on the
ground, and the glossy surfaces of rustling leaves shone dully with pale
reflections of the lunar light. Coyotes howled in the distance as they chased
down a rabbit or other small creature. Nearby, insects sang in the brush, and a
chill wind soughed through the higher reaches of the forest.
His supply of cordwood was stored in a lean-to that extended along the entire
north side of the cabin. He pulled the latch-peg out of the hasp on the double
doors. He was so familiar with the arrangement of the wood in the storage space
that he worked blindly in its lightless confines, filling a sturdy tin hod with
half a dozen logs. He carried the hod out in both hands, put it down, and turned
to close the doors.